A Book of Burlesques Part 24

_XI.--THE JAZZ WEBSTER_

_XI. The Jazz Webster_

ACTOR. One handicapped more by a wooden leg than by a wooden head.

ADULTERY. Democracy applied to love.

ALIMONY. The ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

ANTI-VIVISECTIONIST. One who gags at a guinea-pig and swallows a baby.

ARCHBISHOP. A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.

ARGUMENT. A means of persuasion. The agents of argumentation under a democracy, in the order of their potency, are (_a_) whiskey, (_b_) beer, (_c_) cigars, (_d_) tears.

AXIOM. Something that everyone believes. When everyone begins to believe anything it ceases to be true. For example, the notion that the homeliest girl in the party is the safest.

BALLOT BOX. The altar of democracy. The cult served upon it is the wors.h.i.+p of jackals by jacka.s.ses.

BREVITY. The quality that makes cigarettes, speeches, love affairs and ocean voyages bearable.

CELEBRITY. One who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.

CHAUTAUQUA. A place in which persons who are not worth talking to listen to that which is not worth hearing.

CHRISTIAN. One who believes that G.o.d notes the fall of a sparrow and is shocked half to death by the fall of a Sunday-school superintendent; one who is willing to serve three G.o.ds, but draws the line at one wife.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. The theory that, since the sky rockets following a wallop in the eye are optical delusions, the wallop itself is a delusion and the eye another.

CHURCH. A place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

CIVILIZATION. A concerted effort to remedy the blunders and check the practical joking of G.o.d.

CLERGYMAN. A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.

CONSCIENCE. The inner voice which warns us that someone is looking.

CONFIDENCE. The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place.

COURTROOM. A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds in favor of Judas.

CREATOR. A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh. Three proofs of His humor: democracy, hay fever, any fat woman.

DEMOCRACY. The theory that two thieves will steal less than one, and three less than two, and four less than three, and so on _ad infinitum_; the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

EPIGRAM. A plat.i.tude with vine-leaves in its hair.

EUGENICS. The theory that marriages should be made in the laboratory; the Wa.s.sermann test for love.

EVIL. That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.

EXPERIENCE. A series of failures. Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again next time.

FAME. An embalmer trembling with stage-fright.

FINE. A bribe paid by a rich man to escape the lawful penalty of his crime. In China such bribes are paid to the judge personally; in America they are paid to him as agent for the public. But it makes no difference to the men who pay them--nor to the men who can't pay them.

FIRMNESS. A form of stupidity; proof of an inability to think the same thing out twice.

FRIENDs.h.i.+P. A mutual belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks, hobgoblins and imbecilities.

GENTLEMAN. One who never strikes a woman without provocation; one on whose word of honor the betting odds are at least 1 to 2.

HAPPINESS. Peace after effort, the overcoming of difficulties, the feeling of security and well-being. The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

h.e.l.l. A place where the Ten Commandments have a police force behind them.

HISTORIAN. An unsuccessful novelist.

HONEYMOON. The time during which the bride believes the bridegroom's word of honor.

HOPE. A pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.

HUMANITARIAN. One who would be sincerely sorry to see his neighbor's children devoured by wolves.

HUSBAND. One who played safe and is now played safely. A No. 16 neck in a No. 15 collar.

HYGIENE. Bacteriology made moral; the theory that the Italian in the ditch should be jailed for spitting on his hands.

IDEALIST. One who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

IMMORALITY. The morality of those who are having a better time. You will never convince the average farmer's mare that the late Maud S. was not dreadfully immoral.

IMMORTALITY. The condition of a dead man who doesn't believe that he is dead.

JEALOUSY. The theory that some other fellow has just as little taste.

JUDGE. An officer appointed to mislead, restrain, hypnotize, cajole, seduce, browbeat, flabbergast and bamboozle a jury in such a manner that it will forget all the facts and give its decision to the best lawyer.

The objection to judges is that they are seldom capable of a sound professional judgment of lawyers. The objection to lawyers is that the best are the worst.

JURY. A group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him.

LAWYER. One who protects us against robbers by taking away the temptation.

LIAR. (_a_) One who pretends to be very good; (_b_) one who pretends to be very bad.

LOVE. The delusion that one woman differs from another.